VIGNETTE OF THE SHAH OF IRAN

Once when I had been out in the subcontinent on technical-assistance work for some time, I carried out a promise to stop in Tehran to be the house guest of Dr. Ali Akbar Siassi, whom I had been associated with in international activities and whom had been our guest here when he was president of the University of Tehran. His sons had attended Indiana University, and he was at that time in the cabinet of the Shah.

My plane did not arrive until 2 A.M., but Dr. Siassi was at the airport to meet me and to take me to his home in the residential area of Tehran. His home tuned out to be a marble palace, in the midst of a big compound. He was a rich and influential man as well as a French-trained scholar in the field of psychology and a cosmopolitan educator.

On the way into town he asked me if I had my morning clothes with me. I laughed and answered, “Well, no, I don’t. I have been out in the subcontinent for three weeks, and I don’t have any morning clothes with me. Furthermore, I don’t own any.”

“Well, do you have a dark suit with you?” he asked.

“Yes,” I responded, “with my size, I rarely wear any other kind. Why?”

“His Imperial Majesty has graciously consented to give you an audience in the morning,” he replied, which was court language for “the Shah would like to see you tomorrow morning,” a polite order.

When I came down the steps from my room to the entrance hall of Siassi’s marble palace the next morning, dressed in the best I had available, Dr. Siassi was there in full morning regalia—striped pants, cutaway coat, gloves, and top hat—and off we went. Arriving at the special working palace of the Shah where business was carried on, we were ushered in and started up a long, impressive, marble stairway while guards, with their submachine guns very much in evidence, peered at us from every nook and cranny. As we climbed the stairs, Dr. Siassi asked if I could bow. With a laugh I replied, “I’ll be lucky to make it to the top of the stairs, much less bow when I get there.”

“Well, I will bow for you,” he responded, to my relief.

After all this build-up we were ushered into an unpretentious outer office and soon were asked to go into the small office. There was a handsome young man in brown suit, brown shoes, and I think a colored shirt sitting on the corner of his desk. He slipped down from his desk and greeted me warmly, “I am so glad to see you. It was good of you to come. Let’s sit down on the sofa and talk awhile.” Quite a contrast to the expected formality of the visit! He was relaxed, yet animated in conversation, which projected his magnetic personality.

He kept me for an hour asking questions about what I had been doing in Pakistan, Thailand, and other Third World countries, and then he told me at length of his dreams for education in Iran and for the modernization of the country. I have never met anyone in government anywhere, other than an educational specialist, who had a keener interest in or better grasp of the educational needs of a country than this young man as he expressed them that morning. That conversation convinced me of the sincerity of his desire to democratize his nation, to use education as a means for its modernization, and to use its resources to build a better society for all the people of the nation.